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(1) Nicolas Guillain [de Cambrai]
(b Cambrai, c. 1560; d Paris, 20 May 1639). He is first recorded in 1597 in Paris, where he worked as a wood-carver (e.g. Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John, 1598; Yèbles-en-Brie, St Martin) and as a monumental mason specializing in incised tomb slabs and epitaphs. In 1597 he worked with Mathieu Jacquet, whose influence may have led him subsequently to produce more sophisticated funerary monuments, such as that of 1607 to Claude de Villequier in the church at Giseux, Indre-et-Loire, with two marble weeping figures. He is particularly noted for producing large tombs of black and white marble in which the decorative setting served as a counterfoil to the white marble effigies of the deceased in prayer. Among his surviving tombs of this type is that of Martin du Bellay and Louise de Sapvenières, also in the church at Giseux (erected after 1627). A number of fragments also exist, such as the impressive effigy of Claude de l’Aubespine (marble, 1614; Poitiers, Mus. B.-A.). They share the slight rigidity of composition, realistic but expressionless faces and minute attention to draperies and accessories typical of the craftsmanlike but unimaginative funerary sculpture of the reign of Louis XIII.
Part of the Guillain family
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